by Sam Mariano
For the briefest of moments, I do think about Chicago. I’m not much for snow or working for assholes who abuse their power, but am I even going to be able to work for Rafe? I told myself our relationship would recover, but shit has already popped up. More shit will inevitably pop up. Even if he never cheats on Laurel, Rafe is a flirt. It’s in his nature, who he is. The first time he turns a charming smile on anyone who isn’t her, I’ll want to smash his face in.
Especially because it upsets her. Watching anything but me upset Laurel makes my insides burn with palpable fury.
While I consider just how fucked I am, I reach for my bottle of water, twisting the cap until I hear the seal break. As I take the cap off, my gaze catches on Laurel’s glass. Her new bottle of water is open, half of it already poured. I ordered her an untouched bottle, just like mine, and she hasn’t been back to the table.
“What’s that?” I ask Lydia, pointing at the glass full of ice water.
She frowns at me, glancing at the glass like she doesn’t know what she’s looking for. “Huh?”
“Who poured her water?”
“I did,” she says, watching me like she doesn’t understand what the big deal is.
“Why?” I ask.
“Everyone left me here at the table and I was bored. The waitress brought room temperature bottles of water. I figured since she ordered all that ice, she probably wanted it cold. By the time she got back from the bathroom, it would at least be chilled. Especially since you two lingered so long back there,” she adds, lifting her eyebrows and picking up her own drink to take a sip.
That’s not fucking amusing. I level her a cold look to let her know it, then I pick up Laurel’s glass and inspect it.
“Are you fucking serious?” Lydia demands. “What are you doing?”
There’s residue at the bottom of this glass, something white and chalky. Now, I’m not saying I’ve never seen this happen before—a dirty glass, maybe some food left stuck to the bottom, a lazy dishwasher who didn’t notice or didn’t care. Hopefully that’s the situation. I had no reason to inspect Laurel’s glass before she poured the water herself, so I can’t say for sure this glass was clean when she poured the first bottle of water. I know for damn sure it isn’t right now, and I hope that’s by accident.
Questions pile up in my head. Is Lydia the only one who has been sitting at this table? The chick in the dress Rafe bought her was standing right next to Laurel’s glass when she caused a commotion. When Laurel stormed off, Rafe followed right behind her, but that woman lingered. Gio and Lydia were at the table, but I told Gio to escort her out.
Black dress girl said she worked for Cassandra’s father. What if Cassandra caught wind of Laurel’s pregnancy and sent some floozy to drug her? Since she found out Rafe’s in power now, she has been trying to lure him back into her trap. If news has gotten out that Rafe knocked someone up, every skank he’s ever fucked is probably realizing she lost her chance to snag him.
Cassandra is vicious. She’ll play dirty if it benefits her. If she had her heart set on winning him back and becoming his queen, she wouldn’t hesitate to shove Laurel out of her way by any means necessary.
There’s no way to tell if this is dirt or crushed up drugs, but it’s chalky enough I think it could be the latter. Flicking a glance at Lydia, I ask, “Did you get the name of the woman in the black dress?”
Lydia smirks, clearly not realizing how fucking serious this is. “In my mind, I labeled her Whore Number Two. If her real name was mentioned, I missed it.”
My mind drifts to the waitress with the southern drawl. Brandi, I think. I can’t remember if he’s fucked her—it’s too hard to keep track of all of them. Even if he hasn’t, it’s not impossible someone with more investment could have told her to put something in Laurel’s drink.
Fuck, what if the glass had this chalky shit in it when the glass was first brought out?
I’m just about to put the glass down and haul ass back to the bathroom when Laurel walks past me and slides into her seat across the table. Her cheeks are rosy and I remember telling her to get herself off, but it feels to me like a lifetime has passed since then. Now all I can think about is what’s in the bottom of this glass, and who might want to hurt her.
My plate is suddenly full. I’m too close to this, and I can’t think straight. There are so many fucking potential threats; all I want to do is haul her ass back to my house where none of them can reach her.
Laurel is just now glancing at the empty spot beside her. “Where’s Rafe?” Glancing across the table at me, she asks, “Why do you have my water?”
I keep her glass and hand her the bottle I just opened. I know mine wasn’t tampered with. “Drink this instead.”
Frowning, she says, “It’s not cold.”
It’s not drugged, either, and that’s more important.
Instead of saying that and scaring her when I don’t have all the information yet, I push up out of the booth, taking her glass with me. “This cup’s dirty. I’ll go get you a clean glass and some new ice.”
11
Rafe
It has been a long fucking day. As much as I usually enjoy going out, I’m glad as hell to finally be home, this day nearly over. I don’t like to let a day end like this, though. Some people go to bed depleted after a long day and wake up refreshed, but I’ll carry it with me. I need the rest of this night to go a hell of a lot better than it has so far, and that all depends on the lovely brunette in my bed.
Emerging from the bathroom after a hot shower, I find Laurel curled up on my king-sized bed, hugging her pillow as if for solace. She looks sad, and that makes me feel like an asshole.
It drove me temporarily crazy tonight how this girl I once had full access to is so closed off to me, yet when Sin shows up, I sense her opening like a flower, hoping for a drop of his attention. Like he’s her fucking sun, the nourishment she craves deep down in her soul. It drove her crazy when he didn’t acknowledge her, and I don’t want her to care. Laurel has all the pieces and parts I want, she let me have access to them when we met in Chicago, but now she’s closing me out. Now I’m not the person she wants to open up to.
By nature, I am not a jealous man, but this is a different thing. I didn’t have Laurel and lose her; I had a sample of Laurel, sent it back to the kitchen, and when I changed my mind, a different dish was brought back to the table.
A dish served cold, as it were.
Not being able to reach her is getting to me. I see what I want, it’s lying on my bed wearing nothing more than one of my T-shirts, and I can’t have it.
But Sin could.
That’s the worst fucking thing. I knew Sin was the one who initiated ending things, but I didn’t realize she had attached to him more strongly than she had attached to me. Under similar circumstances, when I rejected her, she dismissed me. That’s why I can’t reach her easily now. If I somehow missed it prior to seeing them at the club, it would be clear now: she still has a thing for him. It’s hard to imagine his rejection being less cold than mine, so I don’t know what the difference is. Why was she able to cut off her fondness for me so effectively he happened, but after just a few days with him, she’s stuck in some kind of mourning period and can’t move on with me?
I need to backtrack, that’s all I know. If I don’t start doing a better job of reaching her, I’ll lose her altogether. Given she’s having my baby, that’s the last thing I need.
I thought Laurel would be easier than this.
As I approach the bed, Laurel’s gaze flickers to me, but it doesn’t linger long. One thing I can usually count on even when she’s not impressed with my behavior is Laurel’s physical attraction to me. Right now I’m shirtless, and she barely even looks. She must be really pissed.
The room is dark since Laurel went to bed while I showered. I pull back the comforter and climb in beside her, but she keeps her back to me like we’ve already been married 20 years, half of those miserable. This won’t do at all.
/> Since she’s on her tummy, I advance closer and climb over her ass, straddling her body. I hear her sigh with annoyance, but I know it’s because she thinks I’m going to fuck her. Joke’s on her; I won’t fuck that pretty little cunt tonight even if she begs me to. No, this relationship needs something more than sex—it needs attention.
So, I give her attention. The irritation melts right out of her as I start rubbing her tense little shoulders. I massage her shoulders wordlessly until she feels relaxed, then I lean in and add a few mild neck kisses to the mix.
Some tantalizing sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan slips out of her. “You smell so good,” I murmur, before lightly kissing her earlobe.
“Mm, so do you,” she murmurs back.
I rub and knead my way down her back. Run my fingertips along her sides, testing her response. I remember most of the things she liked in Chicago, but I need to get reacquainted with her body. Especially if I’m going to piss her off so much. Gotta know which buttons to push to disarm her ruthless little ass.
She’s such a sweetheart 90% of the time, but boy, is she a pistol when you piss her off.
Right now she’s not a pistol; right now she’s my kitten, practically purring with contentment as my hands glide all over her body. Experimentally, I lean in and let her feel my breath on the back of her neck, drop a few feather-light kisses. Her little sighs of pleasure are reassuring. If she genuinely disliked me, she wouldn’t enjoy this. Even with her Sin hang-up, this feels good to her. That’s a good sign. For all the damage I’ve done, there’s still something here I can work with.
After a few more minutes on her back, I move lower. I run my hands over her ass, but knowing she’s not wearing any panties underneath this shirt, I can’t resist sliding a hand between her legs. Cupping her pussy in one hand, I use the other to caress the inside of her thigh.
This is harder than I accounted for. Laurel has left me in such a dry spell, and her bare ass looks so fucking incredible. I bet everything I own no one has ever taken her ass before. That makes me want it even more. My cock stirs, trying to convince me to go back on the “no sex” plan. She’s letting me touch her, even inched her legs apart slightly when I started rubbing her. A helpless little moan shudders out of her and it’s all I can do not to push a finger deep inside her.
Before I can get too carried away, I move lower to massage her legs before working my way back up. After a couple more minutes massaging her neck and shoulders, I reach a hand under her body and turn her over on her back.
“There’s that pretty face,” I say, smiling faintly.
She narrows her eyes with playful suspicion, but I can see how much more relaxed she is already. Since my next move is to drag her T-shirt up and off her body completely, her suspicion seems warranted. At least she doesn’t object. I’m still not going to fuck her; I just don’t see the point in her wearing clothes when I could look at her bare body instead.
In case she is less relaxed now that she’s naked beneath me, I rub her shoulders again while maintaining eye contact. Her gaze is softer now, more receptive to me. When my fingers lightly graze her collar bone, she sighs with pleasure. When I take both breasts in my hands and start massaging them, her nipples harden against my palms.
The glint of sexual interest in her gaze gets me too hard to hide it. I rock my hips forward so she feels it, then lean down and kiss the corners of her mouth while I squeeze her nipples. Laurel wraps her arms around my neck to hold me close. Since I can feel her wanting me, instead of kissing her deeply like I intended, I run a light finger along the most sensitive areas on her face. Her eyes drift closed when my finger glides over her brow bone, so I kiss her eyelids. Laurel smiles, and there’s even more warmth in her gaze when her eyes open. Now I cradle the back of her head and take her mouth. She wants it, so those plump, perfect lips part for me. Our tongues tangle and she sucks lightly on mine in the most tantalizing way. Growling into her mouth, I take her lower lip between my lips and nibble on it.
When I pull back, she arches up to follow, so I know my job here is done.
Laurel is confused when instead of escalating things, I move off her and settle into my spot beside her. At this point, I know it will do me more good to leave her wanting than to fuck her, even if that’s what we both want in this moment.
“What’s your favorite thing to cook for dinner?” I ask her, wrapping my arm around her abdomen and tugging her close.
“My favorite thing to cook?” she asks, pausing thoughtfully. “I don’t know, I like to cook a lot of things.”
Running my fingers along her side, I tell her, “You can cook me dinner tomorrow night.”
“Oh, can I?” she teases. “So kind of you to allow me to serve you, King Rafe.”
I crack a smile and reach down to squeeze her ass. “Damn right. You can thank me later. We went out tonight, so we’ll stay in tomorrow night, take it easy. I’ll show you the library. We’ll find a spot for your Brontë books.”
“They do need a home,” she acknowledges. “If we have a girl, what do you think of the name Charlotte?”
Adrenaline surges through me, but I manage to keep the alarm off my face. “Charlotte Morelli. That could work.”
“Charlotte Price-Morelli sounds good, too,” she says.
I hike up a disbelieving eyebrow. “You don’t seriously expect my child to have a hyphenated last name, right?”
Laurel rolls her eyes. “You’re such a brute. If it’s a boy, do we have to name him after you?”
“Nah. Middle name, maybe. We don’t have to talk about this yet.”
With a knowing little smile, she asks, “Am I making you sweat?”
“Of course not. I just proposed to you a few hours ago; you think I scare easily?”
Laurel swats the arm I have wrapped around her. “That wasn’t real; it doesn’t count. You were all hyped up thinking about me making out with a girl.”
“Oh, yes.” God, the way my blood stirred when she shocked the hell out of me at the table. “You can continue telling that story if you want to. I especially like your attention to detail.”
“It doesn’t make you feel in any way territorial to think of the woman you’re with making out with someone else? Just curious. I mulled it over, and I definitely would not be cool with it.”
“It’s another beautiful woman, not just someone else. Obviously I don’t want you kissing another man, but if you wanted to kiss a beautiful woman? That’s a different story.”
“Why?” she asks, curiously.
I shrug. “Because you’re not into women, so it’s not a legitimate threat, and… you know, two beautiful women playing together... What’s the question?”
“I’ll be honest, it does nothing for me to think of you kissing another man. Definitely does not turn me on.”
It’s funny that she’s comparing her sexuality and mine. Sex isn’t where I wanted to go with this though. Before we can drift back into unpleasantness, I turn the wheel. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
Laurel snuggles into my side, tilting her head back to look up at me. “Like what?”
“Did you have any heroes growing up?”
Nodding her head, she says, “Yeah, but you already know the answer to this one.”
“I do?”
“Carly,” she says, her voice pointed with expectation, like this is ground we have covered before. “Sacrificed and worked her ass off to take care of me. My sister is my personal hero, no contest. What about you?”
“You wouldn’t like my heroes. They’re not very good ones. I looked up to them for other reasons, not because they were good people.”
Cracking a smile, she says, “Your heroes were the villains, weren’t they?”
I hold up my thumb and forefinger with about an inch between them. “Little bit. My dad was the more mild Morelli brother of his batch. There was Mateo’s dad—a real sadistic son of a bitch. Vince’s dad—a cold-hearted son of a bitch. Those were the ones I coul
dn’t help looking up to when I was young. Granted, I had no idea the depths of their depravity. I didn’t see any of that. All I saw was the result. I saw how people wouldn’t fuck with them, how they made up their own rules and everyone else followed them.”
“So, Mateo is a lot like his dad,” I surmise.
Rafe shakes his head. “No, he’s not as bad as his dad was. I mean, Mateo is a bastard, don’t get me wrong, but his father was a nightmare. There was no love in that man. Now that Mateo has Mia, you can see he is capable of it, but Matt wasn’t. When Matt had his Mia, he was her monster. He ruined her, crushed her, chased her away, then hunted her down. And when he found her, he didn’t bring her back—he slaughtered her and the family she dared build without him.”
Regarding me a little warily, Laurel says, “This is your hero?”
“Like I said, I didn’t realize all that.”
“Well, if you’re that crazy, you hide it well. Also, if you kill me, I will haunt your ass. You’ll never get another erection again. Haunted penis syndrome.”
“I wouldn’t hunt you down and kill you.”
Nodding summarily, she says, “Glad to hear it.”
“I liked Ben more than Matt anyway, he had his shit together. Matt let his feelings drive him and make him psychotic, but Ben, he had control. He was ruthless and unbending—he made up the rules and punished anyone who stepped out of line. He was a hell of a boss. Not a great person, but a hell of a boss.”
Laurel nods, a look in her eyes almost like she’s heard this before. Like I’m telling her something she already knows. I certainly never talked to her about Ben during those days in Chicago—I never even told her what I did, since she didn’t ask.
Now I can’t help wondering if she and Sin talked about him, but that doesn’t make much sense. Why would they talk about that? Maybe my mind is just going to Sin because it’s a sore subject right now. Since she and Vince are clearly chummy, he could be the one who mentioned Ben to her and Carly. She was there at his funeral with them, so that makes more sense.
